Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The country is yearning for a man with a plan, but there's only one plan for Mr Morrison, and it's all about him—only a plan for himself and his survival. Everybody else is a casualty in Mr Morrison's plan. We have to acknowledge what he actually said. Despite a national plan, yesterday he said, 'Ultimately, everything is a state matter.'

Under the leadership of this man with many plans and no conviction, Australia has never been more divided. States that once had open borders and open commerce have had to resort to their own powers in order to protect their people. The only interventions the Prime Minister has seen fit to make in this debate are to undermine the ATAGI advice, to attack some of the premiers for taking action when he does nothing and to constantly blame everyone else for his colossal policy failures. And then, of course, he has the singular version of his interaction with New South Wales, encouraging Premier Gladys Berejiklian not to stick with the plan of a rapid lockdown, and the consequences of the Bondi failure are spreading right across the country.

There's one reason that all of this chaos is happening, and that is that Mr Morrison refuses all accountability. He shirks all the tough decisions, and he thinks only about his personal short-term political gain and not the benefit of the country. For the first time in federation, we have a head of government with whom the buck doesn't stop. As inept as Mr Abbott was and as aloof as Mr Turnbull was, can we really imagine that either of them would completely abdicate national leadership and stand up and say, 'Ultimately, everything is a state matter'?

Despite the constant leaks from hotel quarantine sites, Mr Morrison's failed to build a national quarantine facility, forcing Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk to build her own. Despite promising that all Australians would be able to return from overseas for Christmas last year, the Prime Minister was still failing at the end of July this year, when there were still 38,000 Australians waiting to get back into the country. Despite section 51 of the Constitution explicitly stating that quarantine is a federal responsibility, Mr Morrison continues to do nothing to build a safe and secure facility for Australians.

I have to wonder what this national cabinet he talks about really is. If this were a man with a plan that we could trust for the country, surely he would have created a national cabinet with the leader of the government and the Leader of the Opposition. He would have encouraged premiers and leaders of the opposition to come to the table and work in the national interest. Yet he couldn't wait to establish a form of cabinet, a national cabinet, that's been critiqued as not being a cabinet and as not having its documents worthy of protection. This show of a select group of people across the country—not bipartisan—is just not delivering for the country.

Nowhere has Mr Morrison's failure been more absolute than in western New South Wales. The delta variant has ravaged Indigenous communities from Wilcannia to Walgett to Dubbo, and, tragically, last week it claimed its first Aboriginal victim. Last week, only 6.3 per cent of the Indigenous population in western New South Wales was vaccinated, despite repeated warnings to the government from me and Aboriginal health leaders. It's a long way from 6.3 per cent to the 70 and 80 per cent that this government keeps talking about. The Prime Minister's failure to secure an adequate supply of Pfizer for the disproportionately young Aboriginal populations of western New South Wales has condemned them to being locked down in their homes, or in isolation in tents, or to trying to find refuge in their own cars, separate from their family, while the deadly virus is alive and moving around their community. Mr Morrison's plan for Indigenous people was announced in March 2020. He announced that there were going to be vaccines. Here we are, in September 2021, with only 6.3 per cent of the Indigenous population of western New South Wales vaccinated. That's how useless Mr Morrison's plans are. The goal he articulates might be what Australians want to hear, but the man is incapable of delivering it.